Biology and Behaviour (1993)

From the May 1993 issue of the Socialist Standard

It is clear that the biological characteristics of human beings have a great effect on the things we can and cannot do. For instance, the fact that we walk upright, can focus on the same object with both eyes, and have an opposable thumb determines various aspects of the way we interact with the world. If we had wings to fly or could breathe in water or survive by eating sand, we would behave and live very differently from the way we actually do. But how much of human behaviour is determined by our biological make-up? Are we the prisoners of our genes and of our animal forebears, or can we learn from experience, adapt to our surroundings and act in a manner that is not purely ordained by our biological inheritance?

Different
A few moments’ reflection probably suggests that human beings are very different from other animals, that we can learn and invent and discover and develop in ways that no non-human can. Language gives the ability to pass on knowledge to the next generation, so that they can build on the expertise of those who have gone before, and do not need to start all over again at solving the problems they encounter. Some other animals have rudimentary languages, or make some elementary use of tools in obtaining food, but none of these is any way as sophisticated as humanity. While human beings are related to other members of the animal kingdom via the workings of evolution, we seem on the face of it to be animals with so many extra powers and abilities that we are quite unlike even our nearest non-human relatives.

Nevertheless, in spite of what common sense appears to tell us, it has often been argued that many aspects of human social behaviour are directly due to our animal inheritance. This implies that such behaviour is innate and unchangeable, and is as much part of being a human as upright gait and binocular vision. If it is claimed that aggression and genocide are an unalterable part of human nature, a challenge is thrown out to the socialist view that a society of harmony and co-operation is not just possible but is the sole answer to working-class problems.

For instance, back in the 1960s, writers such as Robert Ardrey and Konrad Lorenz wrote best-selling books in which they argued that our instincts made us violent, just as the instincts of many animals make them. Human beings have access to far more powerful weapons, thus rendering our ingrained capacity to violence all the more lethal. Ardrey even argued that it was hunting which made proper humans out of our closest ape ancestors; hunting and killing, then, is not just part of being human, it is what made us human in the first place. Socialists pointed out that these accounts were sheer fantasy, not supported by any evidence and totally ignored the fact that so much human behaviour is learned behaviour. Moreover, these views have a clear political role:

  The lie of innate depravity is a weapon in the hands of the capitalist class: it prevents criticism of capitalism, since there is supposed to be no possible alternative. (Socialist Standard, June 1969).

The Ardrey-Lorenz view tends not to be heard in quite such a blatant form today.

However, comparable ideas can be encountered in a more sophisticated form, even among those who take pains to criticize Ardrey’s distortions. A recent example of this is the book The Rise and Fall of the Third Chimpanzee by Jared Diamond (Vintage £6.99). The author presents a synthesis of a great deal of research in anthropology, biology and archaeology, aiming to show how human beings changed from being just another large mammal into a species that has an unprecedented geographical spread and impact on the world, and yet by its pollution and violence may well be responsible for its own destruction. The title refers to the fact that the closest relative to humanity is the chimpanzee, and that we share over 98 percent of our genes with chimps. We are thus the third chimpanzee species (alongside the common chimp and pygmy chimp).

Are We Chimps?
Diamond’s essential technique in explaining human development is a materialist one, in that he argues the need to survive and reproduce drives our various responses to our surroundings. Unfortunately, he has not managed to rid himself of all the influence of biological determinism. While he acknowledges that our uniqueness as a species lies in the cultural traits (language, technology, etc) that rest on our genetic foundations he can still appeal to our genetic inheritance to explain certain aspects of human behaviour. Specifically, he provides an appalling catalogue of historical instances of genocide, and concludes:

  of all our human hallmarks . . . the one that has been derived most straightforwardly from animal precursors is genocide. . . . Chimpanzee behaviour suggests that a major reason for our human hallmark of group living was defence against other human groups, especially once we acquired weapons and a large enough brain to plan ambushes. If this reasoning is correct, then anthropologists’ traditional emphasis’ on “man the hunter” as a driving force of human evolution might be valid after all – with the difference that we ourselves, not mammoths, were our own prey and the predator that forced us into group living.

Let us look at the evidence behind this. It used to be argued that our nearest animal relations were essentially peaceful, and that there was therefore no reason in terms of evolution to consider humanity as innately aggressive. This exact argument can no longer be maintained, though: evidence cited by Diamond, and mentioned by a correspondent in the January Socialist Standard, shows that chimpanzees certainly can act aggressively, and ambush and kill each other. But what follows from this? Very little, since there is no evidence that chimp aggression is built-in to them. Furthermore, it is simply not possible to draw conclusions about human behaviour or human nature from observations about non-humans. One could pick and choose almost any aspect of animal behaviour, and point to it as a precursor of some similar human trait, but clearly this would prove nothing.

Peter Rigg cartoon from the May 1993 Standard.

Adaptable
In any event, the case for innateness of genocidal instincts is non-existent. Only a tiny percentage of human beings have committed acts of genocide, and, as Diamond shows, they need to convince themselves that their victims are “sub-human”, or at least different from themselves, before they can bring themselves to undertake these acts. Moreover, they do so in certain specific conditions, usually when they are under the orders of rulers or leaders who think they see some political or economic gain. If genocide was a part of being human, it would surely be far more prevalent and far easier to people to commit. The whole point, which the biological determinists ignore, is the fact that humans can learn and change our behaviour drastically. Diamond himself points out that New Guineans whose parents lived virtually in the Stone Age now drive cars and fly planes; plainly they have learned to do this, not undergone some sudden genetic modification. No matter how genetically close we are to chimps, our unique ability to modify our behaviour makes all the difference in the world.

In conclusion, it can be said that the combination of our genetic and cultural characteristics makes humanity a superbly adaptable being, well-equipped to deal with the problems that the natural and social worlds throw at us. Not even human ingenuity, however, can make capitalism an acceptable social system. In a socialist society, all our abilities will be exploited (in the good sense) to the full, and claims that humans are born to fight rather than co-operate will be seen as truly laughable.

Paul Bennett

Racism - the myths that kill (1994)

From the September 1994 issue of the Socialist Standard

Racists see race as one of the central factors in human society and history, playing an important role in how people behave, and explaining why many kinds of social unrest occur or why certain countries are more developed than others. The socialist response to racist arguments is not just to point out their nastiness and the fact that they serve to divide people and to justify discrimination and worse. Rather, we argue also that the whole concept of “race” is a nonsense, and that it has no part in accounting for any aspect of human life.

The racist claim is that a race (and we shan’t keep using the inverted commas, even though it is a non-category) is an identifiable subgroup of human beings, and that (to use their terminology) so-called half-castes apart everybody can be assigned to one of several classifications — usually on the basis of their physical appearance, taking account of such features as skin colour, type of hair or shape of head. The various races, it is argued, have innate hereditary characteristics, which will turn up in all those who belong to that race. Besides physical features such as those just mentioned, racists point to behavioural or intellectual attributes, describing races as inherently more or less intelligent, or more or less hard-working. Some then go on to argue that members of different races cannot, or should not, live in the same community, on the grounds that racial tensions are inevitable. Racist views and policies need not go to the extremes of Nazi genocide, but are still utterly repulsive, condemning some people to poverty and oppression simply on the ground of their supposed racial origin.

Impossible to categorise

One immediate difficulty with this conception is that proponents of the idea of race can never agree among themselves which races should be distinguished, or even how many races there are. Terms such as Caucasian, Negroid and Mongoloid have often been used, but none of these categories covers a group of people with a single set of physical features. Some schemes devised by anthropologists have identified up to sixty races, while still having to admit many intermediate and unclassified groups. Simplistic references to “blacks” and “whites" gloss over the tremendous variety, in skin colour and much else, of members of both these categories. The simple fact is that everyday assignments of individuals to racial groups are based on social, not physical, classifications, which may vary from place to place and from time to time. In the United States, for instance, any child with one white and one black parent is described as “black”, whatever their skin colour. In Brazil there is an incredibly complex terminology of race, with a person’s classification often being unrelated to that of their parents and sometimes being determined in part by their class position. In these and other cases, people are simply pigeon-holed according to whatever system of stereotyping dominates in the society they live in.

In addition, the way people are grouped together will differ greatly depending on which trait is chosen for the comparison, since different features vary independently of each other (dark brown skin and wiry hair need not occur together, for instance). Skin colour has the “advantage” of being immediately visible, but many other bases for classification are possible Many racists, for example, will talk about “British blood” flowing in their veins, but in fact there is no such thing. Blood groups cut right across all proposed racial divisions, having different rates of occurrence in different parts of the world. Categorising people by blood group makes as much sense as doing so by skin colour — in fact, it makes more sense, since blood group membership is objective, and is relevant medically in a way that skin colour is not. But of course racial prejudice aimed at, say, those of blood group A would be pointless, since you cannot tell a person’s blood group just by looking at them.

It is undeniably true that people differ a lot from each other in physical appearance. Yet, from a biological point of view, the significant aspect of humans is not our differences but our similarities: we are a single species, all sharing the great bulk of characteristics. In fact, over 98 percent of human genes are identical to those of our nearest animal relatives, the chimpanzee. All the differences in terms of behaviour and life-style between humans and chimps is due to that tiny contrast in genes. It follows, then, that the differences among all humans can be traced to an infinitesimal part of our genetic make-up. Racists magnify beyond all reason the genetic differences among people.

The variation among humans is mostly due to differing adaptations to the environments in which we live. On the whole, for instance, the darkest skins are found among those living closest to the equator. Though there are a number of theories that attempt to account for this distribution, it is most likely that dark-coloured skin is advantageous for survival in tropical areas because it reduces the risk of sunburn and skin cancer. In contrast, lighter skin is more suited to cooler areas, in that it enables greater production of vitamin D and so prevents diseases such as rickets. Over the millennia there must have been gradual selection in favour of darker and lighter skin in different regions, eventually giving rise to the current distribution. Equally, people in colder areas tend to have stockier builds, as a smaller body surface means less loss of heat. If modem humans originated in Africa, probably with brown skins, expansion into cooler areas such as northern Europe must have involved selection for traits such as paler skin and also the ability for adults to digest milk (milk is a good source of calcium, which is also needed to prevent rickets).

Variation is good

From this point of view, variation can be seen as an undoubted good thing, since it enables humans to survive in a wide range of climates and environments, a range far greater than that for any other animal. And it is precisely because variation is due to adaptation to our surroundings that the variation is almost entirely confined to our physical appearance, which is where we interact most closely with our environment. Thus human differences are confined to such utterly superficial matters as build and skin colour. Moreover, even simple scientific knowledge can nowadays overcome any disadvantages that may exist. When black children began to live in northern US cities, many suffered at first from bone diseases on account of the relative lack of sunlight and hence insufficient vitamin D. But dietary supplements such as cod liver oil were quickly able to make good the deficiency.

Ever since the evolution of the first humans, members of our species have wandered into virtually every comer of the globe. The first way of life — hunting - gathering — involved moving around to find new sources of meat, vegetables and fruits. This inevitably meant encountering other bands, and reproducing with them. Even after the rise of agriculture and the growth of more settled lifestyles, people continued to travel (forcibly or otherwise) to various parts of the earth, and to mix with people of a variety of origins. The slave trades of the ancient world and of more recent times caused enormous population upheavals, just as did wars and crusades. The expansion of capitalism into a world-wide system has likewise caused people to interact and reproduce on a global basis. The upshot of all this is that everyone has a mixed background, with genes from various parts of the world. American "blacks” for instance, have not just Africans but also Europeans and American Indians among their ancestors. All human beings are hybrids, not members of some pure race or inbred local population.

Race, then, is a concept with no scientific validity whatever. Humans simply cannot be characterised or stereotyped on the basis of their supposed innately determined membership of some racial grouping. Humanity is a single species, divided not along biological lines but by the artificial barriers of class and nation. Unlike race, these are not determined by unchanging properties. Rather, they are imposed by a particular social system. Class and national divisions can therefore be done away with — and they will indeed be abolished by the Socialist revolution.

Paul Bennett

Are you anti-social? (1973)

From the January 1973 issue of the Socialist Standard

Returning on the train from Manchester the other day, desperately wanting to nod off to sleep, I was doomed to share a carriage with one of those creatures I dread: the incessant train-talker. To increase my woe, this monster began to discourse upon the nature of the world in such a manner that I felt obliged to attempt to clear up a few of her mistakes.

It all began with complaint about poverty, violence and anti-social attitudes — with which I truly sympathised. Then came that dreaded statement: “But we can’t change anything — it’s all due to human nature”. My heart sank and I felt a huge chasm suddenly open between my travelling companion and myself.

As the conversation continued I began to realise what a mass of muddles has arisen since the spread of Darwinism and the theory of evolution. Uniformed acceptance has moulded our attitudes to our fellow men and given us ideas of man’s social existence as ludicrously unmodifiable. Man is part of nature and therefore, it is often believed, he is involved in a fight for existence which is manifest violently in the animal world and in the battle between nations. In addition, part-time biologists postulate vague statements about “basic human nature” which is generally thought to refer to inheritable, instinctive behaviour lying deep in every human (since the time of the first baby homo sapiens), waiting to show its ugly head — which it is frequently supposed to do — in the form of unpleasant anti-social behaviour.

Such a view is based on a complete misunderstanding of the nature of both evolution and behavioural mechanisms. Evolutionary theory is concerned with group or species survival. Obviously, individuals are necessary for these group structures, but stress on the group is a prerequisite for a comprehension of evolution. A successful species is likely to be one that can adapt relatively easily to changing environmental conditions, and examination of the phylogenetic scale indicates that higher organisms appear to possess behavioural systems that give increased adaptability, i.e. they possess a greater capacity for learning with reliance on learned behaviour over purely instinctive mechanisms. Thus, in unicellular and other simple creatures, behaviour is largely due to involuntary and unmodified actions controlled by the genetic material of the organism and elicited with specific environmental stimuli, depending partly on genetic material but mostly upon past experience through learning.

The most dramatic example of this change through evolution is seen in the determination of sexual behaviour in animals. There are three factors involved: genes, hormones, and learning. In very simple creatures, sexual behaviour is controlled purely by the genes which determine whether the organism is male or female. With the evolution of vertebrates, it appears that genes determine the development of the male and female sexual structures, but that hormones secreted by these sexual organs become the important factors in the instigation of sexual behaviour. Hormones are greatly influenced by environmental stimuli and so provide a kind of monitoring system whereby reproduction can be stimulated in suitable conditions. As we pass further up the phylogenetic scale we see the development of better mechanism that allows for the adaptation of the species. In the higher vertebrates, especially primates, genetic material plays a minor part in the development of sexual behaviour (distinguished from physiological structure) and sex roles are determined by a social conditioning, i.e., through learning processes. It is well known that sex ascription will determine the behavioural pattern of the adult human despite the sexual structures so that, for example, a boy who is brought up as a girl will behave like a girl. (In certain cases the picture is more complicated, of course).

Paralleled with the progression from instinctive to learned behaviour through evolution is the development of affection and social behaviour. This is an important step as we see the direct organisation of individuals to ensure the continuation of the group or species. Man is a social animal and in addition modifies his behaviour continuously through learning.

My travelling companion was unaware that the factor that places Man at the top of the genetic scale is his ability to change. She was aware that she was dissatisfied with a world of violence, poverty and anti-social behaviour. Most people feel the same. The next step is to learn how to change the world so as to allow the satisfactory existence of mankind. This is well within Man’s capabilities.

Let’s get together as social creatures and organise our society as we would like it. Let’s have production for use not profit and at the same time remove the evils of war and excessive pollution that threaten to eliminate our species altogether.

Come on! Change for Socialism.

Judith White